Pharmacies normally dispense medication based on patient's prescriptions as either pre-packaged (where the correct number of doses is pre-packed in a container) or as medicament where a prescribed number of pills are counted into a vial from a supply container.
Automatic medicament dispensing machines are also known in the prior art. However, the prior art has not effectively determined a reliable method for automatically counting pills for dispensing. It is very important that the absolute correct number of pills is dispensed so that the patient will have the correct amount of medication for treatment. To effectively count pills the automatic machine must have a device that singulates the pills so that they can be counted one-by-one. This is where the prior art has had difficulty.